In connection with the display of products in cylindrical containers, which includes, but is by no means limited to, single serve beverages, there has been an ongoing problem involving the setting of product lanes to desired widths to receive the containers, and the adjustment of lane widths from time to time to receive product containers of different sizes. One widely used system for dealing with these issues involves providing a structure at the front of a shelf, with means at the front for positioning and fixing individual product lanes, with each lane typically comprising a bottom wall and a vertical divider wall, together with pusher means for advancing a column of products in the lane toward the front for display and removal. These systems, although somewhat costly, are less than satisfactory for the display of cylindrical containers. When a product lane is filled with a column of such containers, and pressure is applied from the back to advance the column to the front, some of the cylindrical containers will tend to be displaced laterally, unless closely confined by a pair of vertical divider walls. However, since adjacent lane structures are attached only at the front, it is more difficult to resist the considerable lateral forces applied to adjacent divider walls by cylindrical containers at the back of a column of such containers.
The use of extruded lane-forming elements has been proposed, which has advantages for displaying cylindrical products because adjacent lanes can be attach to each other over their full length and can effectively resist a tendency for a column of cylindrical containers to become misaligned when pressure is applied to the back to the column to maintain the products properly “fronted”. However, existing designs of such extruded lane-forming structures have not been commercially successful because of limitations in the ability of adjust lane width over an adequate range. The Hawkinson U.S. Pat. No. 6,622,874, for example, shows an extruded lane structure which, although providing for full length attachment of adjacent lane parts, has a very limited range of adjustment and, as a practical matter, requires the use of separate connector elements for joining adjacent lanes of a display. The Johnson et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,886,699 illustrates another type of extruded lane structure which also has a limited range of lane width adjustment because of the presence of a pusher track in the center of each lane.